Antarctic Dinosaurs

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Two stories involving Antarctic dinosaurs captured the imagination of paleontologists and the public in 2011. Early in the year, William Hammer and colleagues revealed the discovery of two nearly 200-million-year-old dinosaur skeletons and the partial remains of a massive sauropod (a large herbivorous dinosaur) on the slopes of Mt. Kirkpatrick in the Central Transantarctic Mountains. They speculated that one of the new dinosaurs may have been an ornithischian (bird-hipped dinosaur); however, closer analysis suggested that both skeletons belonged to small basal sauropodomorphs possibly related to Plateosaurus or Massospondylus. Since most of Antarctica was unexplored and the collected remains of dinosaurs were few, paleontologists believed that these finds provided critical pieces to the puzzle of dinosaur evolution.

During the austral (Southern Hemisphere) summer of 2010–11, scientists work at the quarry on Mt. Kirkpatrick, Antarctica, where fossil remains of the dinosaur Cryolophosaurus were excavated 20 years earlier.Courtesy of Peter Makovicky

A mountaineer attaches a cargo net to a helicopter to transport a block of fossil-bearing rock from an excavation site at Mt. Kirkpatrick, Antarctica, during the austral (Southern Hemisphere) summer of 2010–11.Courtesy of N. Smith

In August a second study, led by Holly Woodward, examined the bone histologies (the microstructural framework of fossilized bone) of several Australian dinosaurs, which would have lived inside the Antarctic circle in the Cretaceous, for evidence of hibernation. The team reported that there were no significant differences in bone growth between these polar dinosaurs and dinosaurs from other regions. They also noted that the examination of seasonal growth lines in bones did not provide enough information to determine whether a dinosaur hibernated.

Although the 2011 discoveries added much to the study of paleontology, dinosaur research in Antarctica continued to be limited by the continent’s extensive ice coverage and brutal climate. Dinosaur finds were restricted to the rocky regions of some nearshore islands and the Central Transantarctic Mountains. Even in these ice-free areas, fieldwork on the continent remained extremely difficult and required unusual resources. All Antarctic vertebrate fossils had been recovered by expeditions mounted by governmental agencies, such as the U.S. National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey. Many excavations had been extended over a number of years because of short field seasons, infrequent visits to the field sites, and difficult conditions. Some standard paleontological practices, such as wrapping bones in plaster jackets, could not be applied in Antarctica owing to freezing conditions. Along the coast, many skeletons were damaged by freeze thawing, and sea ice often complicated access. All operations in the interior required helicopter support, and the hardness of the strata required that excavations be performed with power tools.

Despite the logistic challenges, the first Antarctic dinosaur was discovered on James Ross Island in 1986. Since then, additional remains had been found there and on nearby Seymour and Vega islands. All but one of these fossils were recovered in nearshore marine sediments that were deposited during the last three stages of the Cretaceous Period, which lasted from 85 million to 65 million years ago. It was thought that carcasses floated out to sea from terrestrial areas before sinking to the sea bottom where they were buried in the rock. Antarctica was thought to have had a warm, temperate climate during the Cretaceous, since the region harboured coals (which could not form under cold conditions) dating back to that period.

Between 1986 and 2003, parts of five nonavian dinosaurs were collected from these islands, along with numerous bird remains. The oldest (89 million–83 million years old) was a tibia of a large theropod (a carnivorous dinosaur) that was 3–5 m (1 m = 3.3 ft) long. Another notable specimen, made up of skull fragments, vertebrae, and the girdle and foot bones of a small nodosaur (armoured dinosaur), was discovered in 1986. Argentine paleontologists named the specimen Antarctopelta oliveroi; it measured less than four metres long. Two partial skeletons of other ornithopod dinosaurs measuring up to five metres long were collected from James Ross Island in 1989 and about 2000. American and Argentine paleontologists described a hadrosaur tooth in 1998, and the jawbones, tooth fragments, and partial leg, of a two-metre-long dromaeosaurid carnivore were discovered in 2003. These last four specimens appeared in rocks that were 83 million–65 million years old.

Although their fragmentary nature renders their evolutionary affinities uncertain, these dinosaurs became important biogeographic data for Antarctica. Four were members of lineages that had inhabited the continent since at least Early Cretaceous times, whereas the hadrosaur tooth demonstrated that various Northern Hemisphere species could have dispersed to Antarctica via South America near the end of the Cretaceous. Antarctopelta appeared to be the only reliable example of a nodosaurid from the Southern Hemisphere.

Bird remains dated to the Cretaceous, however, were more abundant. Vegavis, an extinct Cretaceous bird collected from Vega Island, was thought to be related to ducks and geese. Polarornis, a loonlike diving bird, was also likely related to an extant bird order. These fossils were considered to be the best evidence that the diversification of modern bird lineages started prior to the end-Cretaceous extinction event, which wiped out all nonavian dinosaurs.

In 1990 geologist David Elliot discovered several large bones in Early Jurassic floodplain sediments about 4,000 m above sea level on Mt. Kirkpatrick. That same year Hammer and colleagues began to excavate the site, collecting parts of two dinosaurs from one quarry. The remains included the skull and thighbone of a large theropod, which was described in 1994 as Cryolophosaurus ellioti. The other, more fragmentary remains were part of the knee and ankle of a large quadrupedal sauropodomorph, which was described in 2007 as Glacialisaurus hammeri.

On display at the Australian Museum in Sydney is this cast of a Cryolophosaurus ellioti dinosaur skull that was unearthed in Antarctica in 1990–91. The red areas denote markers used in excavation.Bosiljka Zutich/Alamy

Cryolophosaurus—named for the unusual furrowed and fan-shaped crest on its skull—was approximately 6.6 m long. It was the largest predator known from the Early Jurassic, and it marked the ascent of dinosaurs to the ranks of the world’s top predators after the rauisuchians (a group of crocodile-like archosaurs) and other large predators died out at the end of the Triassic Period. Cryolophosaurus was related to other Early Jurassic theropods with crests, such as Dilophosaurus from the American Southwest.

Cryolophosaurus, a dinosaur discovered in Antarctica, is the largest-known predator of the Early Jurassic Epoch.Walter Myers—Stocktrek Images, Inc./Alamy

Glacialisaurus was estimated at more than 0.9 metric ton (1 short ton). It belonged to a cosmopolitan group of sauropodomorphs that also included Massospondylus from South Africa, Riojasaurus from South America, and Lufengosaurus from China. Other limb and girdle bones, which were presumed to have belonged to Glacialisaurus, were also collected. Additional research was initiated to determine whether the sauropodomorph skeletons found in 2011 were juvenile Glacialisaurus or whether they represented new species.

The Mt. Kirkpatrick quarry and its immediate surroundings also yielded several teeth of a small primitive theropod species, the molarlike tooth of a large tritylodont cynodont (a mammal-like reptile), and the wing bone of a pterosaur (flying archosaur) during its first excavation season. This Early Jurassic fauna lived when all of Earth’s continents were part of the supercontinent called Pangea. Many scientists maintain that this continental arrangement aided faunal dispersal. Paleogeographic reconstuctions posited that Antarctica was warm and temperate during the Jurassic, an inference that was supported both by the fossil fauna and by the discoveries of fossilized wood on Mt. Kirkpatrick.

Cryolophosaurus, Glacialisaurus, and the tritylodont belong to groups that possessed widespread distributions. More important, these dinosaurs differed with respect to the continent on which their nearest relative was discovered. Fossils of the closest relative of Cryolophosaurus were recovered from North America, while the closest relative of Glacialisaurus’s group was found in Asia. This lack of congruence between biogeographic patterns was consistent with facile and rapid dispersal between continents. Remarkably, many of the species found on Mt. Kirkpatrick, such as Cryolophosaurus and the tritylodont were larger than their relatives from more-temperate latitudes. Glacialisaurus, however, was comparable in size to large early-Jurassic sauropodomorphs from other continents. Whether this pattern was a sampling artifact or the result of a biological reason—such as Bergmann’s Rule, which states that animals from higher latitudes are generally larger than their relatives from more temperate regions—had not yet been determined.